Bennett and Key at odds?
Bennett and Key are divided in their opinions and their stats, but at least they’re united in their state of denial.
workers' rights
unemployment
Face facts, Nats
Nats: you didn’t have a job, you’re not really unemployed
In a desperate and heartless attempt to spin their way out of their awful record on jobs, National is getting surreal. First, there’s Bill English claiming that the job you used to have under Labour wasn’t a real job. Then, you’ve got John Key saying that you’re not really unemployed now. I guess it’s all in you imagination. Don’t look to National for help.
Epic fail
Like most of us, Fran O’Sullivan was expecting so much more from the Nats at their conference…
Daddy State vs Youth
National aim to score political points by attacking a small number of 16 and 17 year-olds, and taking away their autonomy. But they’re missing the real-world point – of the tens of thousands of young unemployed who need the jobs that National aren’t providing. That’s the real crisis.
Economic Management
We can expect a lot of economic rhetoric in the lead up to November from our political leaders. What does history suggest with respect to two key economic indicators: production and employment?
Chart o’ the day: fire at will
Fire at will was meant to help young people into work, wasn’t it?
This brighter future
Re-run: Unemployment up, productivity up
As I predicted in this post last year, productivity has risen sharply in the latest stats but for all the wrong reasons.The Herald gushes “NZ employers squeeze more out of fewer workers” but that’s fundamentally wrong. We’re getting less out of even fewer workers. “Labour input” fell 4.3%, while GDP fell 0.8%. Why anyone would think this is a Good Thing is beyond me.
Protest @ WINZ today!
Aucklanders – the fight back against the worst recommendations in the Rebstock report starts now. Join us – Auckland Against Poverty – in a picket, 2pm today outside Work & Income, Sel Peacock Dr, Henderson.
Whitcoulls
Whitcoulls has been here since forever — “one of New Zealand’s most famous and enduring retail chains”. But the chain is in big trouble, and it’s sad to watch the ongoing wreck. Let’s hope that Whitcoulls can be saved before hundreds more workers and families in NZ lose their livelihood to the moribund economy.
Community Max, another Nat failure
Because it’s failed ideology prevents it from leading job creation, National came up with ‘Community Max’. Pointless make work schemes have flourished. At the end, more participants are back on the dole than would have been if they had never left. A waste of time and money. Just like boot camps with a higher reoffending rate than home detention.
Why Revolutions Stumble and Fall
Democracy doesn’t suddenly magically appear as though from a conjurers hat. We know that, right? So why are revolutions seeking democracy D.O.A?
Govt is not there to make your life better – Bennett
The nice thing about David Bennett is he says what other Nats are smart enough to keep quiet. Remember his rant against the minimum wage? But he out did himself with his speech defending the appalling record of the National government. It turns out the brighter future Key promised was a lie – the National government “is not there to make your life better”.
National fiddles as NZ burns
8,000 more unemployed in Q4 2010, and 1,000 more on the dole in January; New Zealand headed to a douple-dip recession after a year of anaemic growth; an average wage rise in 2010 of 1.9% with inflation of 4%. And a government focussed on manipulating statistics instead of coming up with an economic plan.
Key’s long-term unemployment record
John Key has taken a swing at Kiwi workers who have lost their jobs thanks to the bankers’ recession and his economic mis-management. Key claims people are choosing to be long-term beneficiaries “even though work is available to them”. But the jobs aren’t there and that has caused long-term unemployment to explode under his watch.
Key tries ‘come hither’ eyes to attract jobs
PM Key says we shouldn’t lose confidence despite rising unemployment. Pledging to go ‘on the pull for jobs’, Key said he will prostitute NZ to any multi-national corporation and Kiwis should be willing to work for free. The PM was last seen smiling at himself in a mirror, muttering ‘Hey baby, wanna come back to my place and clean it for $12.75 an hour?’
Unemployment Up
The December quarter employment statistics are out. And there’s a big jump up to 6.8% unemployment. 11,000 people lost their jobs, 8,000 became “unemployed” and 3,000 others left the workforce altogether. The labour force participation rate (the number of people of working age, working) is down to 67.9%.
Unemployment – No Story Here
Youth unemployment is 19.8%, but is there much coverage of a shockingly high number? That’s 1 in 5 young people Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs to the initiated); higher than the OECD average.
The family problem
Kiwis frequently like leading the world in the many ways that outmatch our ‘weight’. I wish we weren’t leading the world in this one.
We have one of the worst youth unemployment rates in the world as The Economist shows.
Dole numbers still rising
While the unemployment rate continues to jump around like mad, the dole numbers are telling a consistent story. And it’s not a good one. Every month this year has been worse than normal. In October, the number of Kiwis on the dole fell by 0.1%, that’s compared to a 1.1% fall last October and an average 3.1% drop each October under Labour. This October there were 4,800 more people on the dole than last October. Didn’t you say we were coming out of the recession strongly, Mr Key?
One in ten Kiwis jobless or underemployed
At 6.4% unemployment appears to be falling, slowly. But it also looks to be above where it was at the start of the year, when it supposedly plunged to 6.0%. Economists are viewing the wildly fluctuating numbers sceptically. Whatever precisely is happening, with one in ten working age Kiwis unable to get work, it’s not time for dancing in the streets.
Tourism: revenue flat, employment down
I’m confused by the up beat coverage of the tourism figures released on Wednesday. Have people actually read the numbers? Tourism is in decline. Employment and revenue are still going down, and the next time oil prices go through the roof, the situation will get worse. No cycleway will change that.
Tax Cuts or High Wages?
At the last election we chose tax cuts and unemployment instead of stimulus and stability – which was the more ambitious, high wage way to go?
National are not fulfilling their government’s core reason for existence: closing the wage gap with Australia. No, we’re fast going backwards on that score, and it’s predictable: high unemployment causes low wages.
Why the Right is worried 1: Economy
Yesterday, former National media trainer Paul Holmes and former National Party President Michelle Boag attempted an extraordinary hatchet job on Phil Goff on Q+A. No analysis of the real policy divide that Goff and Labour with National carved out at the national conference, just attack – why? The economy, policy, Key’s fading brand, and the polls.
Doing nothing as dole numbers rise
It was a year ago that Paula Bennett first declared victory over rising unemployment. Since then, John Key has been working his economic strategy hard: high-fiving every schoolgirl he can find, playing with spiders, announcing and re-annoucing literally tens of kilometres of cycleway, smiling and waving till it hurts. But dole numbers are rising.
Tax cuts for the rich no use if you’ve lost your job
Despite Bill English’s firm statement that “unemployment has peaked”, jobs are still being lost in large numbers. 1500 council workers in Auckland. 150 mushroom workers in Morrinsville. 500 workers whose quake hit employers are closing down in Christchurch. From John Key’s Hawaiian beach chair these worries must seem very far away.
Nats fail to save jobs in quake zone
86 workers have been fired from Kaiapoi New World, which will be closed for a year due to quake damage. This is exactly why the government should implement the kind of scheme I outlined where the government steps in to supply the full wages of workers who can’t work due to the quake, funded by delaying the tax cuts for the rich.
Paula’s forever blowing bubbles
It’s been nearly two years now of Paula Bennett declaring that the unemployment crisis is over. Yesterday, she put out a press release titled ‘More than 6,000 beneficiaries find jobs in August‘. Wow, 6,000 in a month, pretty good. But Bennett must have been hoping we wouldn’t read beyond the title. The fact is that 900 more people went on the dole than came off it. The total number of beneficiaries just keeps climbing.
A relentless focus on jobs
The government is canning it’s already too-small and ill-directed Community Max programme. $40 million was a pathetic amount that created, at best, just 3,000 temporary jobs when quarter of a million Kiwis are jobless. And, due to lazy policy-making all the Key government probably ended up doing was subsidising jobs that would have been created anyway.
Job queues longer
Contrary to the sunny prognostications of Nice Mr Key, job queues are getting longer. How much more great economic management from John and Bill can the country stand?
Failure by the numbers
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months before Paula Bennett came to office – 22600
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months since Paula Bennett came to office – 52200
Fiscal cost of extra people on the dole (welfare payments and lost tax) – approximately $1 billion
Money in this year’s budget for jobs initiatives – $31 million
The cycleway & the coming benefit cuts
Attacking beneficiaries won’t solve the real problems. There aren’t enough jobs, the recession is not really over. Rather than dealing with that, this government is carving off an ever large slice of our shrinking national wealth for their rich buddies. The poor and the jobless are turned into figures of public spite by a government of the rich which will cut to their meagre benefits will be pay for tax cuts for the rich.
Welfare working group tries to create a crisis
The benefit system is not unaffordable, the best way to lower its cost is to create jobs. But it is clear that is not on the Welfare Workings Group’s agenda. Their job is to paint beneficiaries as bludgers, the welfare system as broken and expensive. Their job is to pave the way for welfare cuts to pay for tax cuts that will leave the poorest Kiwi families more impoverished. They’ve made a good start.
I’m So Dizzy
The rate at which National have been spinning of late is giving me nausea. It can’t be long until they get to the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide scenario of declaring black to be white and getting run over on the nearest zebra crossing.
Unemployment rises to 6.8%
Statistics NZ has just released the Household Labour Force Survey for June 2010 and it’s grim reading, with an astonishing increase in the unemployment rate from 6.0% to 6.8%.
Maori unemployment is now up to 16.4%, Pacific unemployment is at 14.1% and there’s been a 70% increase in long-term unemployment to 37,600.